Somebody posted in a gym owners' forum that they were being fed a lot of social media ads for marketing companies for gyms. "Some of them are guaranteeing a certain number of new memberships or they will pay your advertising fees," they wrote. "It sounds too good to be true. Are any of you using these type of companies and are satisfied with the return?"
They're right to ask, and the answer is sitting in their own thread. A guarantee like that is usually real and written into the contract. It's just not usually a guarantee about the agency.
Can a marketing agency guarantee results?
It can guarantee the things it controls. We'd put that list at the ads running and a count of whatever gets handed over to you. What it can't guarantee is a student, because the student decides at your desk, in a conversation nobody from the agency is sitting in.
Google says the same about its own search results, on the page it publishes for anybody thinking of hiring an SEO, which is a company you pay to get your website ranking higher. The heading is "Things to consider when hiring an SEO" and the first line under it is "No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google." Then it tells you what to do about it: "Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings," and "If they guarantee you that their changes will give you first place in search results, find someone else."
Google means rankings and we mean white belts, but it's the same test either way. If somebody guarantees you an outcome that depends on a decision they aren't in the room for, the promise has to be held up by something, and the fine print is where they put the props.
What does a marketing guarantee actually cover?
Further down the thread somebody answered the question properly. They started here:
"What they usually guarantee are a certain number of LEADS. Leads aren't clients."
Then they set out what happens in the cases where new clients genuinely are guaranteed, and this is the part worth copying out:
"In some cases, they actually will guarantee new clients. However, they're going to have a few limitations in your contract: 1 - that you do a good job selling the leads they get (and since the leads aren't always good, this can be tough) 2 - that the leads they get will buy some different thing than what you sell (a 'challenge' or low-priced option) - so they won't stick around afterward 3 - that you won't refund anyone ever."
Take those three one at a time, as the owner rather than the reader. The first makes the guarantee depend on you doing "a good job selling the leads they get". The second swaps what you're selling for "some different thing", a "challenge" or low-priced option, which is why, in the same breath, "they won't stick around afterward". The third asks you to accept "that you won't refund anyone ever". Then they name the mechanism: "quite often you'll still wind up paying them because of the fine print."
None of that is a lie. The phrase used is "limitations in your contract", so every one of them was there to be read. Nothing was hidden. It was just about you.
Which conditions void a marketing guarantee?
The ones you can't meet while you're teaching.
This is Neil's second question for any agency, and the one he says owners skip. Guarantees, in his words, are "usually a way that they can actually charge these monthly fees", and then: "usually when you check the proposal and check all the fine print you'll find that even if they don't meet these requirements you're not going to qualify for the guarantee."
The requirement that does the damage is nearly always about how fast you answer. Call every lead within five minutes. Ten call attempts a day. Contact every enquiry the day it comes in.
Now put that against a Tuesday. You've got the five o'clock beginners, then the six o'clock, then a mum who wants a word about her son's grading, then you lock up. Four enquiries came in while you were on the mat. The clause says five minutes.
Speed does matter, and we'd be the last people to tell you it doesn't. We wrote a whole page on the first fifteen minutes after an enquiry because the reply rate falls off a cliff and you're better off knowing. What the clause does is move the job onto you and then bill you for missing it. If that's your Tuesday, read who answers the phone when you're teaching and fix the actual problem rather than signing a promise about it.
Two more questions are worth putting in writing before you sign. Ask whether turning your own ad budget down for a quiet month takes the guarantee with it. And ask how you claim: in what form, and by when.
Your school's own money-back promise to a nervous parent is a different thing with a different job, and treating the two as one is how owners end up offering something they can't afford. We'll come back to that separately.
What should I check in a marketing agency's guarantee?
Stop reading the headline and read the conditions, in a list, with your own last month next to them. Here's the message to send, and the tally to do when it comes back.
Send this to anybody who has sent you a guarantee
Hi [name]. Before I look at the numbers, can you put four things in writing?
1. The exact event you are guaranteeing. A lead, a booked appointment, a person who walks in, or a signed membership. Pick one.
2. Every condition on my side that has to be true for the guarantee to pay out, including response times and call attempts.
3. What I actually get if you miss it. Money back, or more work?
4. How I claim it, by when, and in what form.
Thanks. I will get back to you once I have had a look.
Then put three columns on a sheet of paper. First column, one row per condition. Second, whether you'd have met it last month, counting the nights you were on the mat. Third, how you'd prove it if they said you hadn't.
A guarantee where you tick the middle column every time is worth having. A guarantee where you can't even work out how you'd prove it isn't a safety net, it's a sales tool with a net painted on it.
Two more questions belong in the same email, and neither is about the guarantee. Do they charge monthly regardless of results, and if they do, why aren't they happy to get paid when they bring you results? And what's their client retention, because a company whose schools stay another year is a company whose schools got what they came for. How to judge a martial arts marketing agency before you sign has the rest of that list, and keeping the ad account and the lead list in your own name is what makes leaving an agency possible at all.
Why do agencies offer guaranteed results?
Because a guarantee is the easiest way to sell a monthly fee.
Most marketing companies charge every month whatever results they get you. That's a hard thing to ask an owner for in a town where he's already paid somebody who produced nothing, so the guarantee goes on the front to make the fee feel safe. He signs for the fee. The guarantee carries the conditions.
You can hear the pattern in how owners talk about it afterwards. Another reply in the same thread: "From my experience, these 'guaranteed memberships' offers are usually too good to be true." The version Neil sees most isn't an agency that vanished. It's an agency generating activity, clicks and forms and numbers, while the mat looks the same, and the answer every time is give it more time.
What burns owners, more than bad marketing, is inconsistency. One month works, the next doesn't, and nobody can tell you which the next one will be. The question that settles a hire isn't "did that campaign work", it's "can I depend on this to grow my school", and no guarantee clause has ever answered it.
Where we sit in this
We're an agency, so read this knowing we're on the list you're weighing up.
We don't offer a guarantee, and we think that's the stronger hand rather than the weaker one. No retainer, no contract, and we're paid when a student walks in. There's no risk sitting with you that needs sweetening, because it never got handed to you. For how that works, read pay per show martial arts marketing, and then pay per lead vs pay per show for why the event being counted is the whole argument.
Being paid that way changes what we do all day. There's no month in hand for us if nothing's happening, so we watch the numbers and keep testing, and we bring you a booking rather than a lead, which means the family has already picked a class time before you hear their name. It's one package with every lead channel we can provide inside it, rather than a new product to sell you every quarter. We become your school's marketing department so you can get on with enrolling the students we find.
Who does what doesn't change, and we say it the same way every time. We find the families, get them booked and remind them to come. You welcome them, run a great first class, and enrol them.
That's also why we charge per show and not per enrolment. We can't control the enrolment conversation and we can't see it, so charging you for something that happens in a room we're not in would put us straight back into the position this page is about. We'd rather stay with a school for years than for a quarter, which is why we ask you regularly whether you're happy with it and listen to what you say.
Everybody in this industry runs the same tools. The same ad platform, and the same CRM, which is the software that holds the leads and sends the texts. The results differ on how they're used and on what the person using them gets paid for.
The thing to do Monday
Find the last proposal or guarantee anybody sent you. It's probably still in your inbox. List every condition that's about you. Count how many you'd have met last month.
If that number is uncomfortable, it's the one worth knowing before you sign rather than after.
And if you'd rather not have a clause standing between you and your next ten white belts, book fifteen minutes and bring your timetable and the beginner spaces you could genuinely fill this month. If we don't think we can fill them, we'll say so on the call.
Questions owners ask
Can a marketing agency guarantee results?
It can guarantee a count of something it controls, like leads delivered or ads run. It can't guarantee an enrolment, because that happens at your desk in a conversation it isn't in. Google's own guidance on hiring an SEO says the same thing about search: no one can guarantee a number one ranking on Google. Ask which exact event is being guaranteed, then ask what happens when it doesn't arrive.
What does a marketing guarantee actually cover?
Usually a count of leads, and usually a remedy rather than your money back. The remedy is often more work: another month of ads, a fresh campaign, a credit against future fees. Get the agency to write down the exact event it is counting, the number, the window it is measured over, and what you get if the number is missed.
What should I check in a marketing agency's guarantee?
Every condition that sits on your side. Response times you have to hit, how many times a day somebody has to call, what you may and may not sell the leads, whether you can refund a family. Then count how many of those you'd have met last month, honestly, including the Tuesday nights you were on the mat.
Why do agencies offer guaranteed results?
Because it's how a monthly fee gets sold. A guarantee makes a flat fee feel safe, so the owner signs for the fee, and the guarantee carries the conditions that make it hard to claim. A company that only gets paid for a real outcome doesn't need one, because the risk never moved to you in the first place.